


the first nonwhite men to make it to the end

by piedpiper



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e06 Epidemiology, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1309978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piedpiper/pseuds/piedpiper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Troy isn't unselfish enough to let Abed make the sacrifice play for him, and virus biology doesn't really work like that.</p>
<p>Or:</p>
<p>Troy and Abed fighting zoooooombies!</p>
<p> <br/>EDIT: Now with 300% more character development!</p>
            </blockquote>





	the first nonwhite men to make it to the end

 "I love you," says Troy.

"I know," says Abed.

 Troy stares at him for a frozen second – all serious dark eyes and the Alien-Queen-turned-soldier costume which is neither funny nor annoying anymore and his long, intense face – and then shouts " _No_! Come on! Come on come on come on come _on_!" and reaches down to grab Abed's wrists.

Abed scrambles up toward the window, kicking at the zombies with floppy-shoed feet, and Troy almost dislocates a shoulder trying to pull him up through the small hole. Abed is heavier than he looks, like even though he's skinny his bones are all denser and heavier than normal, and he doesn't fit well through the high window. He's only halfway through, long legs flailing, when one of the zombies grabs his ankles. It might be Starburns. It's hard to tell at this point.

 Abed and Troy both scream and Troy puts more of his muscles into pulling than he's ever used before in his life, even in football, and Abed's shoe comes off in the zombie's grey hands and they both collapse in a tangled heap in the dirt outside the window. Abed's head is on Troy's chest and Troy thinks he can feel both their heartbeats and they're both outside and alive.

 "Oh my god," he pants, trying to catch his breath, "oh my god..."

 Abed picks himself up and nods around the corner. "The thermostat," he says. "We have to get back into the library. Come on."

 He takes off. Troy sprints after him, keeping his eyes fixed on the back of Abed's dark grey vest in the twilight. He wills the fist squeezing inside his chest to go away so he can just focus on the project at hand already; he's almost forgotten how fast Abed can be when he's not trying to accommodate him.

Problem is, he's not doing too well at not thinking about what just happened. Because, okay, their friends are all zombies and _they_ just barely escaped becoming zombies and everyone is going to _die_ if the two of them can't fix it... but. But also Troy just told Abed he _loves_ him. Which was really, really not something he had meant to do. 

Troy really needs to work on that thing where he monitors what he's going to say _before_ it comes out of his mouth. And also on that thing where he doesn't accidentally fall in love with his best friend and then decide that the best time to announce this is during a freaking _zombie apocalypse._

Actually, he decides after a minute, breathing uncomfortably hard, right after he’s done all that he needs to get back in shape. He _knew_ he shouldn't have quit football. He's never going to survive an apocalypse like this, let alone prevent one. And, right, that's happening right now too. Get your head back in the game already, Troy.

 Dean Pelton is pacing up and down outside the steps to the library, rubbing his hands together nervously. He spins around and squeaks as Troy and Abed come racing around the corner and skid to a halt in front of him.

 "Troy! Abed! Um..." The Dean throws his hands up protectively in front of himself, and Troy feels irrationally proud, like, _yeah, you_ should _be afraid of us. We fought our way out of a zombie lock-in. We're survivors now. We're definitely scary_. "Now, I know that you might be understandably upset at this whole situation, but it's only three more hours till the army gets here, so we all just need to sit tight and–"

 "Give us the keys," Troy says. He's more out of breath than he'd like, but his heaving chest seems to be intimidating enough for the shaking Dean, so he ignores the fact that all it really means is that he's out of shape. " _Now_."

 "Now, Troy," the Dean says, backing away a little, "there is a thing called _chain of command_ –"

 Troy punches him in the balls. The Dean collapses, squeaking, and Troy rips the keys off his Lady Gaga belt, breathes out, straightens up, and nods at Abed.

 "Right," he says. "Let's go."

He turns toward the library doors, wriggles the key around in the lock of the metal barrier and pushes it open. Its accordion folds scrape back with a noise like-- well, like metal scraping on metal and cement, creative writing isn't exactly Troy's strong suit -- and he peeks through the glass door into the library beyond.

The former site of the party is wrecked almost beyond recognition, either by uncaring zombies or fleeing humans, and eerily deserted. Splintered furniture, overturned bowls of Cheetos, and the tattered remains of pumpkin cutouts lay scattered across the carpet. Troy is about to unlock the second set of doors when a zombie face, mouth stretched wide open in a silent howl, slams into the glass about two inches from his own.

Troy jumps about four feet straight back from the door and screams like a little girl. " _Jeeeeesus_!" He never swears, like ever, for a variety of reasons, but worrying about Nana and switches is about the last thing on his mind right now. He slams the metal gates shut again, leans against them, and turns to Abed, who's standing watch over the groaning Dean. "There's gotta be some other way into the library. We're not going in there."

Abed cocks his head to the side for a second and considers. "There's an alternate thermostat in the janitor's closet. I mapped out all the electrical circuits in the library for my Energy Studies class with Britta last semester. We can get there through the back." He turns like he's about to take off again.

"Wait," Troy says. His heart is pounding about a million miles per hour and not calming down, like the one zombie freaking him out reminded his body just how many things there are to be freaking out about right now, but his voice is weirdly flat and exhausted. It's scaring him a little, actually. "Abed. I gotta make sure. You didn't get bit, did you?"

Abed considers for a moment, like maybe being bitten by a zombie could have slipped his mind or something. "I'm good," he says. "They just got my shoe."

Troy closes his eyes in relief for just a second. "Good," he says. "Really good. Great. Okay, let's go."

It occurs to him – later on, because _that_ adrenaline spike pretty much knocks out all of his critical thinking for a while – that if Abed hadn't been there he would have gone in the front door anyway. If Abed hadn't been there, he would have had nothing left to lose.

They stop by a grey emergency exit near the back of the building, and Troy looks around. "This is it?"

 "Yep." Abed nods curtly. "Your keys should get us inside. The closet is about fifty yards in, on the right. We have to get past a couple study rooms, so stay alert." He's speaking even faster than usual, like the military-commander version of himself that appeared once during the paintball game but even more so, delegating at Troy.

 "I'm a lert," Troy protests. "I'm a total lert. I'm always a lert. Let's do this." He takes a deep breath as Abed turns toward the door. "But Abed?"

 "Yeah?" Abed stops, turning halfway back toward Troy and listening but avoiding his eyes. Which might be unintentional given, well, _Abed_ plus the soldier thing plus him clearly having a lot of other things to worry about, but Troy feels the fist inside his chest squeezing harder for half a second before he catches himself. They do _not_ have time for that right now. That was clearly demonstrated a while ago.

"Do. Not. Try and sacrifice yourself for me again," he says. "We're both gonna make it out alive. We're gonna."

 "Got it," Abed says, serious and military, and turns back toward the door, holding out a hand. "Keys."

Troy places the keys carefully in Abed's open palm, their fingers brushing together for a second, and Troy is really, strangely weirdly conscious of that now in a way he's never been before. It's like everything Abed is brighter and more important in his vision now, and wow, there are about a hundred million more appropriate times and places that this _thing_ between them could have happened than now and here. Especially since Abed's just opened the door.

They stalk carefully down the dimly lit hallway, their footfalls deadened by the carpet, and make it past one study room before they hear shuffling feet and undead groans from an adjoining corridor. Then they run. Troy almost passes the janitor's closet; Abed has to grab him by the elbow and spin him around, and man, it's _good_ that Troy has taken dance classes or he'd probably have brought them both down. They wedge themselves inside the closet, closing the door quickly behind themselves, and it's death-of-all-life, pitch dark for a minute while they both grope around for a light switch.

Troy finds it eventually, and the bare bulb flickers on, illuminating a lot of dusty mops and brooms. It's not a very big closet; they're squished together at the hips, and Troy can't say he minds. Abed finds the thermostat, lifts the dusty plastic cover, and glances at Troy. "Fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit? Fifty degrees? What do you think?"

"Just dial it as low as it goes," Troy says. His heart still hasn't slowed down, and now he's shaking; that's probably his body figuring out that it can no longer keep up the steady flow of adrenaline it's been supplying him with for, apparently, the last three hours. He's felt something a little like this a few times before, during a couple moments in the paintball game, and after that keg flip when he'd already done what he'd had to do and could just let the pain do what it had to do. But this is _way_ more real and a whole lot higher-stakes, and most importantly, it's still happening. He can't afford to crash now.

"Right." Abed pokes at the thermostat, which makes a beeping noise, and straightens up. "Okay. Got it."

"Awesome," Troy says, and, in a move of _fantastic_ planning, opens the door. Right into three zombies.

 "Shiiiiiit," he says – _says_ , definitely does not squeal like a ten-year-old girl – and slams the door closed again and leans against it. "Awwwww great. Now what are we going to do?"

Abed's eyes dart off to the side for for a minute, and then he turns, grabs a broom in each hand, and hands one to Troy. "There are only three of them. We'll fight our way out."

 Troy has been seriously regretting, for a while at this point, trading in his duct tape armor for what is essentially complete shirtlessness. It's not just that he's vulnerable; it's that he _feels_ vulnerable. But this door doesn't lock from the inside and it's a matter of minutes if not seconds until the zombies discover that, and their odds are not going to get any better if they wait until there are more zombies outside.

He screams what he _hopes_ comes out as a manly battle cry and bursts out of the closet, managing to thwack one of the zombies with the door on the way. He hits another zombie in the chest with the business end of the broom, less effectively than he'd planned but hard enough to keep it at bay, and Abed stands back-to-back with him so they can work together to lay into the two remaining zombies, which is pretty cool. And it actually looks like they're doing really well until Troy spots the other zombies shambling down the hallway towards them.

 "Um," he says, "Abed," and Abed looks around.

"Okay," he says. "Plan B."

Abed whacks his zombie in the head, sending it staggering back into the wide window of the computer room, and grabs Troy's hand and pulls him down another hallway as the glass of the window spiderwebs and crashes down behind them. Troy stumbles after him, trying to catch up to Abed's long-legged stride, trying not to try and remember whether this is the first time they've held hands while running like this because that is _not a priority right now._

"Where are we going?" he asks breathlessly, still more high-pitched than he'd like. "What's wrong with where we came in?"

 "Roof," Abed says shortly. "We should lose them in the stacks upstairs. We don't want to lead them outside."

 "Right. Okay. Wait, what are the stacks?"

They slam through the unlocked door of a stairwell Troy could swear he's never seen before, jamming their brooms across the doorway behind them, and pelt up the stairs. When they emerge, one floor up, Troy _really_ doesn't know where they are. The room is almost completely dark and really, really still and silent and smells like dusty, unused books. He can just make out rows of metal bookcases in the dim light. He can still hear the faint sounds of zombies trying to bash their way into the stairwell behind him, but this place looks like the set of a completely different horror movie. Probably one about ghosts. Or serial killers.

"Abed," he whispers hoarsely, his fingers snaking farther into Abed's palm. "Where the _hell_ are we?"

"The stacks," Abed whispers back. "It's where they keep all the books no one wants to read. There are stairs to the roof over there." He points. "I found them last Halloween when I was being Batman."

There's banging from the stairwell behind them. Abed mutters something profane-sounding under his breath and pulls them forward, then veers off between two tall, dark bookshelves. They hurry through to the other side and sidle against the plaster wall, toward the nondescript metal door Troy can see at the far end of the room.

Something wooden splinters behind them, and oh crap, that was the other door. "Hurry up hurry up hurry up!" Troy hisses at Abed, who fumbles with the keys like there are too many of them all of a sudden, and the zombies are _in the room with them._

Abed tries one key and then another and another, jamming them clumsily into the keyhole; his hands are shaking, Troy can't help but notice. The fourth key doesn't work either, and they can hear the zombies shuffling down the stacks, idly ripping up reference books. Abed kicks the door with his one remaining shoe. "Goddamn piece of _shit_!" His voice -- too loud, too deep, belonging to whoever he's being right now and not him -- bounces and echoes off the metal shelves, reverberating with the clang of the door. The groans of the zombies get louder.

"Shhh!" Troy hisses desperately. "Come on!" Abed goes back to the first key, slots it into the hole on the third try, and rattles it, trying to get it to turn.

"Ohhh shit," Troy moans. The zombies have come into view around the bookshelves, hands grasping blindly towards them, and of course they had to have left _both_ brooms in the stairwell. He grabs a handful of books off the nearest shelf and hurls them at the zombies, rapid-fire, trying to buy a little time.

Abed hisses between his teeth and grabs Troy's upper arm, pulling him backwards. Troy registers that the door to the second stairwell is finally open only half a second before Abed slams it shut again, leaving them entombed in the black stairwell. Troy can't see _anything_. This is clearly becoming a recurring pattern.

"One more flight up," Abed says, totally calm and composed again in no time at all. A zombie bangs on the door, making Troy jump, and he searches for Abed's hand again but can't find it in the dark.

"Right," Troy sighs. "This shouldn't be hard at all."

They both take a couple experimental steps and run painfully into something metal. "Sarcasm?" Abed inquires.

"Yeah," Troy says. " _Definitely_ sarcasm."

It takes them probably the better part of twenty minutes to grope their way up the flight of stairs, find the doorknob at the other end, and unlock that too, praying all the way that zombies aren't intelligent enough to work a knob-latched door that opens out. When they finally emerge outside, Troy is blinded by even the dim light for a minute, and then his eyes adjust and he momentarily forgets completely about the zombie situation in favor of the we're-on-the-roof-of-the-Greendale-library situation.

 "Whoooooa," he breathes.

It's just a flat roof, cement and tar, with a short lip around the edge and a couple cement blocks and traffic cones scattered here and there. But it's still pretty epic, by virtue of being the _roof_ of the _Greendale library_.

 "Yeah," Abed says, "It's pretty cool. I've been Batman up here before. But not now." He whacks Troy on the arm with the back of his hand. He's definitely being someone other than himself; Troy just isn't sure exactly how much. "Focus, soldier. We need to barricade the door. They're going to get through eventually."

 They drag the cement blocks in front of the door -- thank god it opens out -- and sit on them to wait. It's a couple more minutes before they hear some faint clanking, and then the clear sounds of the zombies shambling around in the dark stairwell, trying to figure out again how this lifting-their-feet-to-different-levels thing works.

 "They should be getting better soon, right?" Troy says anxiously. "If the thermostat thing works? It'll work. It has to work, right?"

 Abed says nothing. He just listens intensely, his gaze unfocused into the middle distance. He hasn't looked this serious since the paintball war, maybe not even then. Troy's stomach feels tight and staticky, like the metaphorical butterflies are made of lightning, which sounds a whole lot less cool than it would have a day ago.

 "I'm gonna go take a walk around the roof," he says after another minute, because he's hoping it will help him feel a little less bizarre, or maybe a little less _protective_. Because that's what he's feeling right now, he realizes -- he's been in constant keep-Abed-safe-even-if-you-have-to-die-for-it mode ever since the basement. His body doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that that's not quite so urgently necessary anymore, and now that the action's stopped he's going to have to _think_ about all the things that have just happened and he doesn't really want to think about _any_ of them yet. He stands up and shakes his arms out down to the fingers, like somehow that could help with anything. "Call me if anything happens."

 "Okay," Abed says. Not more quickly than usual. Probably. "I'll let you know."

Ten minutes (twenty minutes? thirty minutes?) later, Troy's walked around the perimeter of the roof seven and a half times and Abed hasn't called him over for anything. He walks back to the stairwell slowly, hands in his pockets, suddenly cold in the night air. He'd be cold even if he was wearing a sweatshirt.

 "It didn't work," he says numbly. "Dropping the temperature didn't work."

"Their behavior hasn't changed, as far as I can hear. I tried communicating with them, and they can't understand me," Abed says. His face is blank, and not even the good, normal-Abed kind of blank; it's the kind of blank anyone's face might show, when overwhelmed by absurd tragedy. "It should have worked," he says. Like he's _puzzled_. "According to the genre, it _should have worked_. Zombie movies resolve through ridiculously simple and scientifically improbable plot twists all the time. I... should have known the human body doesn't work that way in reality."

 "If Rich was already bitten when Annie suggested the cure," Troy says slowly, "then he might not have been thinking straight–"

 "–and he came up with an idea that wouldn't work," Abed finishes.

 Troy turns away from the door, feeling sick. Now that he knows there's no way to turn any of those people back, he can't stand to listen to the mindless noises from the stairwell anymore. He's afraid that, somehow, he'll recognize one of the grunting voices. Or, worse, that he won't.

 "Rich said they'd die in a couple hours," Abed says quietly behind him.

 "Yeah, well," Troy says. He feels very tired all of a sudden. "Rich was wrong about everything else, wasn't he."

 And then he hears the rustling in the bushes from the ground. He walks over to the edge of the roof to see, forcing his feet to move even though he knows he doesn't want to see what he's about to. Abed follows him.

 "I didn't lock the doors again," Troy says through gritted teeth. "I cannot be _li_ eve I _didn't lock the doors_."

 Zombies are shuffling out of the front of the library over the broken glass of the main entrance's doors, sniffing the air around them before heading off in various directions. Most of them are still wearing their Halloween costumes, and at least one guy is naked. A day ago, Abed and Troy would have laughed their asses off at that in a movie, but nothing in the world is funny anymore. Troy thinks of Dean Pelton for a moment before deciding he's not worth the worry; the Dean deserves whatever he gets for locking them in, and besides, there are just so many more things to worry about now.

 "I... did not expect that twist," Abed admits, and then falls silent. Troy stands frozen and cold, while a little voice in his head says singsongs tunelessly _you just caused the end of the world, Troy_ over and over and over again.

"This is my fault," Abed says, completely out of nowhere as far as Troy is concerned. "I know you have trouble focusing on details when you're trying to get things done quickly; I should have noticed the gate for you."

Troy thaws, just a little bit, so that his veins feel like they're filled with frozen slush instead of ice. "No," he says. "No, Abed, this was _waaaaay_ my fault. I was the one who unlocked it again in the first place–"

"I know your limitations," Abed insists. "I should have remembered to watch out for things you overlooked, but I was too busy trying to be a hero in whatever movie I thought this was–"

"No! You're fine! You saved my life! I just needed to not be such a complete freaking idiot!"

And then Abed holds up a hand, cocks his head to the side, and says, "Listen." Back into military mode from being as upset as it's possible for Abed to get, just like that.

Troy listens. There's a rumbling in the distance.

"Is that... army trucks?" he says slowly.

Abed smiles an Indiana Jones smile. Troy falls to his knees on the rough concrete of the roof. "Oh, thank god, please let this be over, I just want someone to come and fix this for us–"

Abed puts a hand on his shoulder in a be-quiet way – which is a little unexpected coming from Abed, but maybe that's just military-Abed as opposed to normal-Abed, and either way it's pretty much exactly what Troy needs right now to get him to quiet down – and nods toward the front of the building. They both peek over the edge of the roof. The trickle of zombies out of the doors of the library is more like a stream now. Or a river. Or whatever other metaphorical body of water describes... a lot of bodies, moving out.

The army trucks skid to a stop in various positions around the building, and black-uniformed soldiers with rifles – _real soldiers with real rifles_ \-- jump out and take up position, moving fast around the building. They haven't found the outlet of zombies yet, but they will soon. From this angle on the roof, Troy can just see Dean Pelton running out from wherever he's been hiding till now and babbling at one of the few men who's sporting sunglasses rather than a gun, his hands moving frantically. It's impossible to make out what he's saying, but it's clear that he's way past worried and solidly into hysterical. Troy wonders vaguely what the soldiers must think of the bad Lady Gaga impersonator who just jumped out of nowhere and started screaming at them.

The agent who the Dean is talking to says something back to him, much calmer, and they exchange a few sentences. Then there are three or four or five gunshots from the zombie-infested side of the building, so much louder than in the movies that neither Troy nor Abed realize what they are until they've both jumped about two feet in the air, and the man talking with Dean Pelton suddenly gets a lot more worried. He talks into his walkie-talkie and to the man standing next to him, and then turns back to the Dean and says a couple more words to him. And then he nods to the man behind him, who, without any warning whatsoever, pulls a handgun out of his jacket and shoots the Dean in the head.

It takes Troy a second to remember how to breathe, and so Abed's hand is over his mouth by the time he can draw breath to scream. He screams into Abed's hand anyway, quietly enough, and it's a little spitty and gross and Troy thinks he might pass out or throw up or start crying or all three.

 "What did he do that for?" he whisper-screams when Abed finally takes his hand off his, Troy's, mouth. "What the _fuck_ did he do that for? He didn't have to do that! What the _fuck_?"

 The Dean's head just kind of exploded, almost anticlimactically. That was also not like the movies, and Troy never, ever wants to watch another action movie for the rest of his life, if he even gets a rest of his life.

 There are more gunshots from the direction of the library entrance, like a lot more gunshots, and Troy doesn't want to look but he looks anyway. Almost everyone from the party is outside by this point, shambling in random directions. The two of them really were the only ones to make it out unzombified.

 The uniformed men are trying to move into position around the group but stragglers keep breaking off and escaping, so they're just spinning as they shoot, freeform. And Troy recognizes the people shuffling blindly toward or away from the guns. He recognizes so many of them.

 The gunshots are deafening, putting the world into the auditory equivalent of a strobe light. Troy is clinging to Abed's arm and he doesn't even notice until later, and Abed's hand is clamped over his and there is so very much blood.

 Zombie Annie falls, a grey-and-red Red Riding Hood at the edge of the fluorescent lights. Zombie Britta falls, trying to gnaw the face off a uniformed teenager, and from the way the soldiers turn on him ten seconds later it looks like she was successful. Zombie Chang is crazy even as a zombie, spinning around in slow-mo circles and trying to bite the leg off one of the soldiers before she shoots him in the head. Zombie Shirley falls; zombie Pierce falls; zombie Jeff falls. And it's over.

 The silence is deafening, and the smell is faint but worse. The uniformed men head out into the night after the stragglers, leaving another group to clean up the bodies. Troy and Abed slide down from the rim of the roof and stare into space.

 "Yesterday," Troy says after a while, surprising himself with how little his voice is shaking, "we were in your dorm room making costumes out of duct tape. Where the hell did we go wrong?"

 Abed doesn't answer, but at least it's in a silent-agreement way rather than an I-need-a-reboot way.

 "They all died." Troy's voice is still way closer to normal than he feels like it should be, which is starting to really freak him out, actually. "Like just now. In front of us. Or undied. Whatever."

 "Yeah." Abed blinks three times in rapid succession, which is probably as close to crying as he's ever going to get. Troy thinks he himself might be in shock or something, because he's _not_ crying or screaming or curled up in a ball rocking back and forth, and that doesn't happen a lot even when he's not in crisis.

 "Abed?" Troy says, after an interminately long period of time.

 "Yeah?"

 "What are we gonna do?"

Abed is silent for another second and then says, "Well," and right now Troy is so damn grateful for Abed's ability to put his feelings somewhere else while he works on the situation at hand, "it kind of depends. If the soldiers took care of all the zombies, then all we need to do is make sure no one knows we were witnesses. We should probably move somewhere else, at least to a different town if not a different state. We can get an apartment and stay out of the spotlight for a while. We'll be okay."

 "Yeah?" Troy says. "Yeah. Right. Okay."

 "And if the zombies did escape," Abed continues, "which is less likely than the movies make it sound but obviously possible, then I've done enough research on survival in zombie apocalypses that we should make it through alive. The first thing we need to do in either case is find you a shirt, and me another shoe. And then we can look for some duct tape."

 "Okay," Troy says, but he doesn't move. It's cold on the roof and he's scrunched up next to Abed to keep warm, and he really, really, really does not want to deal with whatever comes next just yet.

 "Abed?" he says, after another long while.

 "Yeah?"

 "I'm sorry I called you a nerd."

 "It's okay," Abed says. "I am a nerd."

 "Yeah, well," Troy says, smiling a little. "Me too."

 "Cool," Abed says.

 "Abed?" Troy says again, staring out across the roof into the dark. Behind them, the army trucks start up again, spinning gravel on their way out.

 "Yeah?"

 "Um, I just wanted to make sure," Troy says, and takes a deep breath, "like, in case you missed it or something, with all the us being about to die and everything, but I. Actually do. Actually love you. Like, not just as a friend or Princess Leia or whatever, but, like... the other kind. You know. That."

 Abed is silent next to him and for a second Troy thinks it's a rejection, that maybe in the basement Abed thought Troy was actually just reaffirming their completely platonic friendship with a random Star Wars reference, or was only humoring Troy in his final moments because he thought it wouldn't end up mattering, or that maybe Troy made up that whole memory and neither of them actually said anything at all. And then Abed, stiff and still as a statue with his hands spread out in his lap like he doesn't quite know what to do with them, says -- rapid-fire like he's trying to get the words out of his mouth and into the air they're sharing as quickly as possible -- "I love you too."

 Troy turns his whole body to look at Abed and Abed looks back, a little uncertain, his brow creasing as he cocks his head to the side like he's not sure what Troy is going to do next. And it hits Troy really damn hard exactly how familiar the mannerism is, and exactly how much he loves it and how much he loves Abed even if he never let himself admit, it even to himself, until it was almost too late.

 His heart balls up with something hard and white-hot and not exactly unpleasant, and he can only think about how weird and lucky and bizarrely un-tragic it is that they ended up here on this roof, both of them alive and together. He doesn't think about it too hard, partly because he doesn't think he's going to be able to think very hard about anything for a while without having a breakdown and partly because the things he's feeling are too big and complicated to put into words, but mostly it boils down to the fact that they're _alive_ in a world in which they're suddenly both very fragile and their being alive is miraculous. And Abed is still waiting to see what he'll do next.

 Troy takes another deep breath and says, and hates himself as soon as he says it because _really, Troy? Pretty damn smooth, you idiot_ , but he says, "Cool."

 Abed's brow uncreases, and his face turns... different, more vulnerable than Troy's ever seen him before, and _that's_ just Abed, without any acting at all. And then he grins a little bit.

"Cool cool cool," he says.

 ***

 They kiss.

 ***

 Neither of them dies.


End file.
